Man is created in the image and likeness of God. All life, at every stage, has value and should be cherished because he is a child of God. Yet, more and more frequently, we see children tossed aside, children abused, children unwanted, and children created in labs. We see traditional families broken apart and even scoffed at. We see chaos reigning and a love of human life dwindling. What is it that man has become?

In modern times, skewing the image of the human being as a child of God, created in His image and likeness, is a process that started the day the first condom was sold in a vending machine early in the 1940s.

While it is equally true that, since the beginning of time, man has tried by every means possible to prevent the creation of a child or stop that child's life before birth or even after, it has become painfully obvious that mankind has not learned any lessons from the history of his own foibles.

From the condom vending machine, to the approval of the pill in the '60s, to the decriminalization of abortion in the '70s, America has been headed down a road paved with a misunderstanding of God's plan for the human person. Sexual satisfaction has become the goal, while the nuclear family has become something of an oddity among so many in our enlightened age.

In fact, on the subject of the human being, it would be safe to say that the creation or destruction of a person is looked upon as something akin to the quality control standards in a factory. Devaluation has become commonplace.

Today there are in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics in almost every town. There are technicians who take money from folks who are either infertile or who merely want to have a baby without having to go through the natural course of events with a spouse. Many of these in our day are homosexual couples – two people of the same sex who want a surrogate to help them add a baby to their "family."

Thus, with the advent of IVF and its progeny has come the challenging question of what to do with human embryos who have been frozen because their parents had no use for them at the time, but who wanted to save them in case they wanted another baby later.

Recently, attorney Ken Connor wrote about this dilemma. What should be done with all these frozen children? He states, "All these frozen embryos fall into one of three categories. A) They are tiny persons, just waiting for parents to come along and rescue them from their frozen prison, or B) they are organic material, mere fodder for scientific research, or C) they are mere reproductive detritus. It all depends on whether someone wants them, needs them, to live."

It further depends on how much money these preborn children would garner if used in research allegedly needed for the development of treatments for ailments. Such therapy, we are told, can only be developed by using the stem cells from human embryonic children – a use which results in their death.

So from the condom vending machine to the manufacture of preborn children that starts in a petri dish, it would seem that humankind has moved from appreciating the miracle of man to figuring out ways to make man.

To make this matter worse, the news is replete with terrifying images of these children abused and unloved. For example:

"Stories of gross abuse of children who were manufactured via third-party reproduction are now emerging. Two Australian men hired a Russian surrogate to deliver their 'son,' whom they began sexually abusing just days after birth and exploited in a pedophile network that authorities described as one of 'the most heinous acts of exploitation this office has ever seen.' Then there is the Israeli repeat sex offender who gained sole custody of a little girl he procured through surrogacy."

And the situation is only going to become worse as time goes on. So where do you begin to undo the problems that have been created by the human being's desire to be a god rather than to love God?

That, my friend, is the question. Frankly there is no simple answer. What is clear, though, is this: Man is not a machine; he is a mixture of matter and being. He is the only creation on this earth that can use his free will to insert himself into this mess and begin to unravel the evil.

No machine is capable of that; no machine will ever be capable of that.

Judie Brown

Judie Brown is president and co-founder of American Life League, the nation's largest grassroots pro-life educational organization... (more)

Judie Brown is president and co-founder of American Life League, the nation's largest grassroots pro-life educational organization.

She has served three terms as a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life in Rome. Daily Catholic cited her as one of the top 100 Catholics of the 20th century.

Judie has appeared on 20/20, 60 Minutes, Mother Angelica Live, The O'Reilly Factor, Good Morning America, Today, Oprah, and Larry King Live, as well as hundreds of other television and radio talk shows. Her comments regularly appear in major print media nationwide, and she has written numerous editorial pieces for magazines and newspapers, including The Washington Post and USA Today.

Judie is married to Paul A. Brown, and they have three children and nine grandchildren. She and her husband have been involved in the pro-life movement since 1969.